The greater risk of fewer deaths: an ethnodemographic approach to child mortality in Hausaland

"A Nigerian case study illustrates how local understandings of health influence perceptions of infant survival in ways that may juxtapose indigenous interpretations to other 'objective' data. Evidence from two extended field investigations of a Hausa-Fulani village, set 12 years apart, suggests a decline in childhood mortality rates attendant upon the increasing availability of biomedicines. We note, however, that local perceptions are that mortality risks are now greater for those less than five years old. Our discussion focuses on the circumstances that inform this ethnodemography and its applicability to other population studies." (SUMMARY IN FRE)     

Re-Inventing Mississippian Tradition at Etowah,Georgia

Frequent population movement and political re-organization spurred a pattern of repeated abandonment at the Mississippian mound center of Etowah in the southeastern United States. These processes also characterized the larger surrounding region in north Georgia and southeast Tennessee. The Etowah abandonments provided inflection points where interest groups were able to distance themselves from previous conventions of structure and reformulate new forms of sociopolitical organization. Re-invented traditions were embedded in changing definitions of genealogical and mythical time, and mediated through the built environment and iconography.     

Rooflessness in London

Rooflessness in London emerged as a media issue and political problem during the 1980s. While "rough sleeping" undoubtedly increased, numbers are hard to quantify because studies are unreliable, use different categories, and people seamlessly drift from one category to another. This article analyzes the causes of rooflessness in London, focusing on central government policy change at a time when London, atypically among major cities, had no overarching metropolitan government. The creation of multiple quasi-governmental agencies and charities whose responsibilities for homelessness overlap does not help coordination. Many short-term initiatives have been attempted, but solving rooflessness may require more radical changes if endemic homelessness is not to be the condition of the post-welfare state.     

‘Not fullye so loftye’: excavations at the Royal Fort,St Michael’s Hill,Bristol

The Royal Fort was the largest of Bristol’s northern ring of Civil War forts. Designed by Prince Rupert of the Rhine’s Dutch engineer, Bernard de Gomme, and constructed between 1643 and 1645, it was maintained during the Commonwealth long after its founder was in exile and his cause lost. Despite the intensity of subsequent development, it has survived as a place name for over 350 years. Recent excavations at the fort site have revealed unprecedented information on the scale and topographical adaptations of fort buildings, which, to date, may be unique in the British Isles. Features post-dating the forts’ decommissioning and reclamation of the land, particularly for the 18th- and 19th-century pleasure gardens of the wealthy mercantile Tyndall family, include a previously unknown ice house and evidence for heated glasshouses.